The Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED AI 2024 emerges as the first Copilot+PCs laptop equipped with a Snapdragon X Elite CPU. Four years ago, Asus introduced the Vivobook S series, which includes the S 15 and S16 models. While initially known to a limited audience, the series has evolved through various configurations from 2020 to the present. The 2024 version retains the same name but is far from being “yesterday’s Vivobook S15.” Let’s take a closer look at the Vivobook S 15 OLED review below:
Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED Review
Design
There is no plastic material on the Asus Vivobook S 15 2024 product line, except for the keyboard buttons. It is all aluminum and a clear advantage that immediately caught my eye and touched all my senses with a cool feeling when I first looked at and touched the brand-new laptop from Asus.
The Asus Vivobook S15 15.6″ device is covered with a shiny Platinum Silver color, making the visual experience even more worthy. With a thickness of only 1.47cm and weighing only 1.4kg, it is a professional device for enthusiasts and those who pursue perfection.
Opening the lid, the Vivobook S 15 AI 2024 reveals a stunning display with ultra-thin side bezels and slightly thicker, yet well-balanced, top and bottom bezels. Below the display, the minimalist keyboard features square keys and a compact Numpad, providing efficient data entry.
Most connection ports are on the left side of the device. These include two Type-C 4.0 ports with DisplayPort and Power Delivery support, one HDMI port, one Micro SD card reader, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The device includes two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports for connecting standard accessories.
Keyboard and trackpad
The keyboard and trackpad of the Asus S15 2024 are of high quality. The full-sized keyboard includes a compact numpad that retains essential keys for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, making it suitable for data work.
The RGB LED background under each key is particularly stunning. Microsoft’s Dynamic Lighting feature lets you personalize your LED colors and select from six different lighting effects.
The trackpad offers responsive and precise one-finger movements and clicks. Mouse navigation and page scrolling are smooth, rivaling the performance of a MacBook. Although the size of this trackpad cluster is not too large, it is still very spacious for a 15.6-inch laptop like the ASUS Vivobook S15.
Display
With the Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED slim laptop, you get a top-notch laptop featuring a large 15.6-inch display with impressive specs. It boasts a 3K resolution, a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a 120Hz refresh rate. The screen offers 100% DCI-P3 color accuracy and 600 nits of brightness, making it excellent for HDR content. However, the special thing is not only that.
Asus’s Lumina OLED technology significantly enhances both visual clarity and performance. The OLED panel delivers precise colors and sharp details, making it perfect for entertainment and image editing.
In addition to its impressive display quality, the Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED offers advanced image content security features. ASUS Adaptive Dimming and Adaptive Lock feature track your presence when looking at the screen. When you look away, the screen automatically dims. If you leave the laptop, it automatically locks. When you return, the screen recognizes and easily unlocks when you sit in front of the device.
AI Features on Windows 11
Our Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED review unit comes with the latest Windows 11 version 24H2 operating system right out of the box. Users can now experience most of the AI features immediately. However, Copilot will transition from a “simple utility” in the lower right corner of the screen to a standalone software application.
The Photo + Paint app on the Vivobook S 15 2024 impresses with its AI photo editing capabilities via commands. The generative AI feature automatically crops and beautifies photos with high-quality results. When trying to draw and using Coocreator to describe in English, the app creates beautiful AI photos. This feature also uses NPU instead of Cloud AI.
Finally, the Live Caption feature is useful for meetings with international partners and watching foreign movies and videos without subtitles. AI will translate and interpret text directly in 44 different languages.
Also see: Acer Swift Go 14 AI 2024 Review
The Asus Vivobook S 15 features a Full HD webcam with a convenient on/off switch for privacy. Its image and video quality are impressive, maintaining clarity and minimal distortion even in low-light conditions.
If you want to enhance your appearance and surroundings, the AI Windows Studio Effects feature can help. It edits skin and facial details, removes unwanted backgrounds, and allows for flexible background changes, so you can confidently participate in any meeting.
Without needing advanced features, the Windows Studio Effects toolkit is the AI feature I use the most and find most useful. It provides a series of effects for myself and the background, making meetings more professional. I have tested video calls on Telegram, Zoom, and Google Meet, and they all perform well.
Battery life
The new Vivobook S15 features a 3-cell 73Wh battery that offers over 12 hours of usage with ARM software. Like Apple’s ARM-based Silicon chip, the Snapdragon X Elite enhances power efficiency in Windows laptops, including the Vivobook S15. This results in cooler operation and reduced battery drain.
During basic tasks like web surfing, watching movies, or making video calls, the device remains cool and doesn’t need the fan to turn on. For each task, I used only about 3% of the battery over 15 minutes, offering a battery performance comparable to the MacBook Air M3.
The laptop features two USB-C 4.0 ports, each with a 90W charging capacity, allowing the battery to be fully charged in under 2 hours.
If you find that the battery life of the Asus Vivobook S15 is not as impressive as the MacBook’s—around 15 hours—be patient. Soon, a wave of applications and updates for ARM laptops will be released, addressing this issue and significantly improving battery performance.
Vivobook S 15 OLED review tets
Performance Rivals the MacBook Pro M3
Our Vivobook S 15 OLED review model is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 12-Core processor, 32GB LPDDR5 RAM, and 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD. However, don’t underestimate it, as it has a power consumption of up to 45W. This is the highest among the Copilot+ PC lines, including the X1E-78-100 version that has already been released or is soon to be launched globally.
Benchmark the power of Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 with Cinebench R24. It can be seen that with a score of 990 multi-core points and 106 single-core points, the Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED has good graphics processing performance, with stable speed and extremely cool temperature.
This comprehensive set of Geekbench 6 benchmark scores provides an objective evaluation of the processing and multitasking capabilities of the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 compared to the MacBook. It also demonstrates that this chip is more than capable of handling everyday tasks efficiently.
Gaming test
Auto SR technology announced by Microsoft will support the following series of games by default: BeamNG.drive, Borderlands 3, Control (dx11), Dark Souls III, God of War, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, Sekiro Shadows Die Twice, Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 and finally The Witcher 3.
Let me briefly mention some of the games I will test, which will be God of War, Borderlands 3, Shadow of The Tomb Raider, and especially GTA V. What are the details? Please follow our Vivobook S 15 OLED review below.
God of War (2018): 41 FPS, Low settings, 720p (with Auto SR)
For this game, I suggest setting the graphics to Low due to its high resource demands. This will ensure smoother performance. Use HD resolution and play in windowed mode rather than full screen for the best experience.
I will explain now: Auto SR technology functions only when playing games at this resolution and in windowed mode. When activated, the NPU begins refining and enhancing image details. Although the FPS is generally acceptable, ranging from 35 to 48, you might still notice some jagged images that appear unnatural.
Switching to full screen, I can now adjust the resolution to the highest level of 2.8K, but the image quality is still set to Low. The FPS also starts to drop significantly, only fluctuating between 26 – 31. But in return, the image is more beautiful, and the details and colors are more natural and easier to see. However, at this FPS level, the performance is only sufficient for playing basic games and will not provide a smooth experience.
Compare images with and without Auto SR:
Borderlands 3: 35 FPS, Low settings, 720p (with Auto SR)
Borderlands 3 is on the list of Auto SR supported games, and in this game, I can clearly see how AI enhances image details. As you know, this game features animated graphics with relatively simple object structures. However, when these images are automatically upgraded, they become significantly more detailed.
The most noticeable feature of the game is the font, when Auto SR upgrades the details, the strokes of the letters start to change. It’s not very smooth, but it’s still readable, and the strokes of the characters are quite clear.
The game characters have received significant upgrades thanks to advanced AI enhancements. Weapons now feature greater detail, with more vibrant colors and smoother surfaces. Jagged edges and blurriness have been eliminated, resulting in a sharp, clear appearance that approaches Full HD resolution.
When you switch to full-screen mode while keeping the resolution and low settings, you’ll notice that the lines and edges of objects and scenes in the game appear jagged and blurred. Auto SR is most suitable for games with anime-style graphics and cartoons rather than realistic graphics.
Compare images with and without Auto SR:
Shadow of the Tomb Raider: 42 FPS. Low settings, 720p (with Auto SR)
In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the Auto SR upgrade improved image details, but the effect was minimal despite its support from the outset. Given the game’s complex graphics, featuring numerous trees and low light conditions, Auto SR struggled to distinguish individual details effectively.
Still at Low settings and HD resolution, I had a pretty tiring experience playing this game. The overall image was quite blurry, the FPS was not high, only fluctuating around 30. I played in windowed and full-screen modes, but the difference was unrecognizable. It was still similar, not smooth and sharp.
GTA V: 65 FPS, High setting, 1080p (no Auto SR)
Most of us spent our childhood playing this game. Although it does not support Auto SR, this game reaches the peak of perfection when playing on a pure ARM chip like Snapdragon X Elite. With High settings and full HD resolution, it is easy to achieve 65 FPS and maintain stability from 65 – 80 throughout the game.
The shooting mission scenes with many police, many vehicles, and explosion effects, are still very smooth, FPS does not drop too much. Only a few FPS differences are insignificant. Applying pure Adreno GPU hardware is superior to Intel Arc Graphics.
Key Takeaways from Gaming on Snapdragon X Elite
One advantage of Snapdragon X Elite is its temperature management. Regular Ultrabooks will quickly heat up to nearly 100 degrees when playing games. With Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED 2024, the laptop provides comprehensive cooling throughout the game, and the noise of the cooling fan is negligible.
Even when I unplugged the charger and played titles on the default battery capacity, the FPS level still fluctuated in each one. The Snapdragon X Elite demonstrated no performance drops, showcasing its exceptional ability to optimize power while efficiently conserving energy.
Auto SR technology enhances low-resolution images by upscaling them to higher resolutions and applying AI algorithms for tasks such as sharpening and denoising. However, it does not improve frame rates. To use Auto SR, ensure you’re in windowed mode instead of fullscreen.
I also tested other popular games such as League of Legends, Valorant, Dota, ZenlessZone Zero, and Fifa Online. The results showed poor compatibility and could not launch on Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED AI.
Even though I have a subscription to Xbox Game Pass, I’m still unable to access the Xbox Store. This is frustrating, especially since Microsoft hasn’t fully optimized the service.
Final line
The Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED 2024 is designed for excellent performance in work-related tasks, not for gaming. Nevertheless, it can handle open-world games like GTA V quite well. However, other games may face compatibility issues due to the specific demands of the Snapdragon X Elite.
Ignoring the appearance and hardware of the Asus Vivobook S 15 2024, which has no flaws to criticize. Also, the battery life and performance are excellent. Choosing to buy and own these Copilot+ PC laptops at present can be said to be a good investment.
Also see: MSI Cyborg 15 AI A1V Review
Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED 2024 price and availability
Currently, the Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED is on sale at Amazon.com for just $1,199. It is also available at Newegg.com and BHPhotoVideo.com for $1,249. Don’t miss out—experience its numerous AI features and share your thoughts in the comments below!
